Araminta Spookie in Cantonese [via Taiwan]

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My wife says translations into Chinese are always a bit weird, but I liked the cover of this one and the first person voice, so I took it out.

In Hong Kong, you can renew a book 5 times at the library before they send Joaquin Phoenix after you. I think I renewed this one 4 times. Actually, I didn’t finish the first one, I got side-tracked by another book, maybe 3 Body Problem or Virgin of the 7 Daggers, but the second one hooked me a bit more and, despite a few troughs, I got through it.

Then I got through book 3, the one where their neighbour steals their frogs without getting punished for it at the end, and now I’m on book 4.

Each book starts at a gentle pace, with Araminta wandering around the mansion, either looking for a relative, looking for a ghost, looking for a secret door, looking for Uncle Drac’s old Shannon Tweed vids.

The voice is quite natural, and I can pick up a lot of good phrases, though half of them aren’t used in spoken Cantonese. Some of them are Taiwanese, too, as that’s the place it’s aimed at/translated for.

There’s about 17 different ways to say ‘usually’ and ‘even if’, I’m not sure why. Some of the ‘even if’ words double as ‘although’ or ‘even’, a lot of it is situational in Cantonese, and of course a lot of them you wouldn’t say in conversation. The trick is knowing which is which, and the supplementary trick is being able to not mix them up. Continue reading →

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Not Another Mishima

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Gena Rowlands met with the scientists somewhere near Almeria, Southern Spain. She didn’t know this but they were the same scientists who’d brought back Pol Pot, the same scientists who’d predicted genocide holes = long distance space travel and the same scientists who would one day put the mind of a Japanese student into the body of an English lit student/gym instructor.

It was 1989.

‘Here’s what I want,’ said Gena, checking her watch. ‘My husband, John…you know him? He’s a director…was a director…he did Shadows and Faces and…Gloria. No? Doesn’t matter. The point is…what I want is my husband, alive again, via science.’

The scientists muttered something in Spanish.

‘I know, he’s dead. But only just. I mean, it happened a few weeks ago. But that doesn’t matter, right? From what I’ve heard of you guys, the science you can do, that doesn’t matter. Does it?’

The scientists nodded.

‘Cool. That’s cool. So the point is, what I want is…’ Gena paused, realising she’d said this part already. ‘Okay, you know what I want. Bring John back. My husband, bring him back to me.’

The scientists looked at each other.

‘You can do that, can’t you?’ Gena said, lighting up a cigarette. ‘I mean, I’m not just talking to a bunch of fucking actors here…am I?’

The lead scientist broke off from the others and led Gena to another part of the desert twenty metres away.

‘We can do it, of course. Explanations, however, are a different matter. Science is…it’s very complicated, the methods are…perhaps not so easy for you to understand.’

Gena breathed smoke on his jacket. ‘Try me.’ Continue reading →

Mandy [SPOILERS]

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Director: Panos Cosmatos

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roach, Bill Duke, a bunch of real life cultists, The Cheddar Goblin

Plot: Red and Mandy live a peaceful life in the Shadow Mountains, a place that is idyllic during the day and nightmarishly red and misty at night. One day, Jeremiah Sand and his cult get lost on the way to the recording studio and pass by Mandy, who chooses the worst possible moment to look interesting. Sand decides that he must possess her so sends his goons to summon some demonic bikers and kidnap her.

Subplot: An overweight kid has a gnawing sense of dread as he suspects his new friends don’t like him as much as they say they do.

Subplot 2: Bill Duke sits in a trailer, worrying that ‘Fuck Off’ isn’t clear enough.

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Is there nothing else out there like Mandy?

I don’t watch enough movies to make that claim, but it is weird, and slow-paced, and it does have those moments that transcend expectations and make you think, J J Abrams would never have done that.

Instead of reviewing it, I’m gonna point out all those moments, in no real order.

Calling the satanic bikers using the rock of ??

As with most of the film, there’s no exposition about what the rock of ?? does or how it works or how Jeremiah Sand came across it, the cultists just park their van in the middle of a blood forest and blow on it. Then wait.

While waiting, the blond cultist who always has his mouth open, winds down the window, looks out at nothing, winds it back up again, pauses, winds it down again, looks out at nothing etc. The cultist who blew on the rock is caught in the foreground slowly losing his patience and maybe what’s left of his mind. In most other films, there would’ve been dialogue. In this one, nope.

When they’re not glued to their leader, these cultists hate each other. Continue reading →

Suspiria 2

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‘Oi sing yan.‘

‘Mo chor.‘

‘Means alien?’

‘Yup.’

‘Okay…’ said Sila, looking to the left of his brain where he’d been told his language conduits were, ‘Oi sing yan hai…yee gah…chu lido…hai Heung Gong.’

‘Aliens are living in Hong Kong?’

‘Yup. Were the tones okay?’

The teacher smiled. The same way she’d smiled when he mixed up wife and grandma. ‘Some.’

‘I’ll take that.’

‘40% accurate.’

‘Ho geh.‘

‘Lei yau mo gin gwor oi sing yan?’

‘Huh?’

‘Have you ever seen an alien?’

‘Ah. Yau mo gin gwor. I knew that.’

‘Ho lak ju.‘

‘What?’

 

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The rest of the lesson carried on in pretty much the same way, the same way it’d gone for the last eight years since he’d first murdered ‘lei ho’, not realising he had to sing it, not say it, or say it but with elasticity, showing four tenths teeth and moving his mouth in an alien way, alien to the way he’d been taught while growing up, which wasn’t really taught either as sheep had once been geep, think had once been fink, and Batfink had probably always been Batfink. Continue reading →

Space [Manifold] // Stephen Baxter [Spoilers]

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Title: Space [When I search for it online, it has a ‘Manifold’ added to the title].

Characters: Reid Malenfant [a name almost beyond parody]

Nemoto [Japanese scientist]

Gaijin [Alien robots]

Plot: Spanning almost two millennia, the story begins with the gaijin and their asteroid belt scam being rumbled by Nemoto, who spots them from her shoebox on the moon. Reid Malenfant borrows Stephen Baxter’s brain, figures out that the Gaijin are actually sailing in from the solar focus, which is somewhere out past the edge of the solar system, and goes to investigate. Other characters flit in and out, avoiding depth and other hobbies. The hobby is science. There is nothing else.

Better than Event Horizon?

This isn’t a bad book, but it isn’t a good one either. It’s hovering somewhere around average. Starting with the Fermi Paradox hook and then failing to keep my attention for more than seven pages is not a good sign [for me].

I’m sure there’s a better way to write that, but I’ve been struggling with English for a while now, especially when it comes to reviews. Something’s not working right in my brain. Feels like I’m parroting other sources. Or simplifying words to primary school level.

Still, this is not a bad book.

It’s about space, aliens, exploration…it has a page on different, theoretical ways we can travel to the next star…so why didn’t I like it more? Continue reading →

Yat bun vs yat bun vs yat bun/Geronimo Stilton in Space/ Star Trek

No matter how far I get in fluency and vocab, it always comes down to words like yat bun. If you don’t know any Cantonese, yat bun can be three different words [that I know of], all of them relatively common.

Yat bun = Japan

Yat bun = generally/normally

Yat bun = one half

My default ‘yat bun’ is Japan, I don’t know why. But when I actually want to talk about Japan, I will overthink it and usually say one of the other versions.

It’s all about tones. That’s where the difference lies.

If you’ve studied Cantonese for a while, and someone says all three ‘yat bun’ to you then you can probably tell the difference. Yet if you have to say it yourself…

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Cantonese is a mind fuck.

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You know, if you read Geronimo Stilton books in Cantonese they can actually seem decent.

By Cantonese, I mean traditional Chinese writing.

It took me seven weeks on and off to get through the one where Stilton goes into space to regain control of a bad guy’s satellite.

Seven weeks Continue reading →

Urdu Camper van [textbooks lie]

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By the end of this unit, you’ll be able to say

Amir

undercuts Urdu with

ballots of concern, debris spilling lung shaped, five ditch down, round up Ismail + Fatima + Callie’s Tanith Lee

Fax left, stretch fur

Drench two heads, one higher than the other, debate John Hannah

with hidden numbers and

slippery oar

Contact SETA, if you have to

don’t fall for Cube

Hold onto Heinlein

Stretch more fur

attempt physic, call up

causative agent green

offer cheek

dry out the Romulan

slide along not down the fibreglass Continue reading →